The Bitter End

It’s not over, the saying goes, until it’s over. I am well into week eight of a nine-week chemo regimen. Only one more treatment to go and then I can gradually recover from a cure that (at least at this stage) feels worse than the disease. After that will follow a series of tests and periodic doctor visits to make sure the cancer is gone for good.

That is the good news. The bad news, admittedly minor in the long view, is that the end of this process is not only accompanied by the maximum effect of the drugs (one hopes), but also the maximum experience of the side effects. Although, thankfully, I have been free of the hospitalization, fevers, and cramps of the early days of treatment, I am experiencing profound fatigue from chemo-induced anemia, along with occasional nausea. It’s an odd sensation to spend most of one’s days resting and avoiding activity and yet still feel as if one had just run a marathon race with a thirty-pound backpack. It gives me great empathy for sufferers of chronic fatigue, and gratitude that my condition at least is temporary.

And so it goes. Though I lie helpless much of the time, I see a day, very soon now, when I will return to the world of the so-called normal. I will pick up the pieces of a broken life and try to figure out how they all fit together. All the little stresses of day-to-day living will return to be sorted out. The housekeeping chores and the home repairs. The employment conundrum. The relationship struggles. They will all be mine, and I will hold them close and love them, and hate them, all over again.